


That Voices Never Share

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Angst, M/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 18:30:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13254150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: Endverse: Dean's learned to be careful. In his experience, the moment you admit to loving something, you lose it.





	That Voices Never Share

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LegendsofSnark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegendsofSnark/gifts).



> Written for [LegendsofSnark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LegendsofSnark)'s prompt, _End verse Destiel, Castiel and Dean are lovers, no one knows and Dean plans on keeping it that way._
> 
> Many thanks to [majesticduxk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesticduxk/pseuds/majesticduxk) for all her beta help!

Dean is always careful.

You gotta be, these days. Dean’s always lived on the edge of the warzone, always been a soldier, ready to go running into battle when the order comes, but these days the whole damn world is a minefield. You watch your step, you keep all the parts of yourself held in tight, anything you might need later clutched close to the chest, because you never know when you’re gonna lose it.

Losing a brother to the Devil: some might call that careless. Dean does, late nights when he’s awake in his cabin with nobody to warm his bunk and nothing to distract him. He calls it careless, because when he doesn’t, he finds himself wondering if it was maybe the opposite. He was so damn afraid of seeing Sam fall into Lucifer’s clutches that he stayed away instead of holding on, and that means the whole damn thing is on him.

So now, he’s careful. He doesn’t show his hand, doesn’t show much of anything, just concentrates on doing what has to be done. Finding supplies. Taking out Croats. Keeping his people alive. Dean’s pretty good at that, so mostly the rest of the camp don’t mind that he does it with a scowl. 

Mostly. Of course, there’s always—yeah. 

There’s always Cas.

 

\----

 

The first time Dean finds him wasted, he near enough loses his shit.

The camp’s still new, but Cas has been acting weird for a while now, keeping to himself and not jumping into the fight like he used to. Dean’s even caught him sleeping a couple times, like he did back when he first cut himself off from Heaven. Back then Dean woulda made a joke of it, balanced an empty cup on Cas’s head or drawn a dick on his forehead or something. Now, it’s just a tap on the shoulder and a “Dude, wake up,” and back to business.

The cabins are only half-built right now, and so they’re sharing. It’s late when Dean calls it a day, and he’s tired enough he doesn’t even bother putting away his boots, just kicks them off and lets them fall wherever. He hasn’t seen Cas in a couple hours, and he didn’t complain earlier when Dean set up an extra makeshift cot in the cabin, so Dean’s kind of expecting to find him sleeping again. At first, seeing Cas’s outline slumped in the corner, he figures he was right.

Then, as Dean flicks on the lamp, Cas stirs and looks up, eyes wide and glassy, and Dean sees the bottle he’s clutching against his chest, an inch of cheap bourbon sloshing in the bottom as Cas lurches upright. Instinctively, Dean reaches out a hand to steady him, but Cas rights himself before it gets to that, squinting in concentration as he sets the bottle down.

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a sigh, trying to hold it together. “You’re drunk?”

Cas regards him solemnly. “Extremely.”

Dumb question, really.

“Where’d you even get—” Dean pauses, shakes his head. “Screw it, I don’t even wanna know.” Sure, he could come out with some lecture on how they can’t afford to waste supply runs hoarding booze when they’re struggling to survive out here, but that’d make him a hypocrite and a half. “Just—be careful,” he says, instead. “I need you sober.”

Cas looks him in the eyes, at that, still swaying slightly. “No, you don’t,” he says. It’s quiet, straightforward, and Dean doesn’t have an answer for it. At least, not an answer that won’t give away more than he can bear to share right now, or maybe ever.

“You’re drunk,” he repeats, because that’s the safe thing to say. “C’mon. Get some shut-eye.”

Cas doesn’t say anything more. He lets himself be manhandled onto the nearest cot, and when he’s settled, he breathes out like he’s deflating and closes his eyes. Dean pats his shoulder and Cas’s face does this weird little expression, not really a smile, before it softens into unconsciousness.

Dean crawls into his own sorry excuse for a bed, and turns his back and tries not to think.

 

\----

 

It’s supposed to be a routine supply run. All their intel says the town is deserted, and it oughta be a simple case of grab and run.

Only then Dean kicks down the last door on the block, that of a rickety outbuilding that might house stores or just spiders, and there’s a woman huddled in the corner, a skinny toddler held tight against her chest. Their eyes on him are fearful, not hungry.

They’re human.

They’re human, and Dean forgets to be careful. He sinks to his knees and offers the woman a hand up, telling her, “Hey, hey, it’s okay, we’re gonna get you out of here.”

The woman relaxes, just briefly—and then her eyes go wide and terrified again at something over Dean’s shoulder, and the Croat hits him like a ton of bricks before he even has time to turn around.

He struggles, gasping for breath, just conscious that the damn thing hasn’t bitten him yet, and he needs to stop it doing so if he wants to make it to tomorrow. There’s noise outside, footsteps and gunfire and Cas’s voice calling his name, and then the Croat collapses deadweight on top of him and Dean’s head hits the floor and everything goes black.

When he wakes he’s in the back of a truck. It lurches over a pothole at he sits up, and Dean twists to the side, sticking his head out the window into the cold night air until he’s sure he isn’t going to heave his guts up. 

“That woman,” he gets out, once he’s able. “The kid. What—”

“They’re okay.” Cas’s hand finds his shoulder. “Welcome back,” he says, then. His voice is steady but even in the dark Dean can see that his eyes are wide, his relief settling heavy.

Or maybe that’s just whatever pharmacy counter specials he’s picked up on this run. Dean would be naïve to think that wasn’t happening.

“’M fine,” Dean tells him, settling into the backseat. Or trying to, anyway, only the rutted track they’re headed down is unforgiving, and Yeager’s driving isn’t gonna win any prizes for comfort, and the next pothole they hit jostles him hard enough he almost hits his head again. Cas’s big hand gets in the way, though, and he cradles the back of Dean’s skull for just a second before letting him go.

“You don’t look fine,” Cas says, then frowns and amends, “You didn’t look fine. Back there.” He jerks his head, the frown still fixed on his face. He gets like that sometimes, pissy when he’s worried about Dean, and Dean guesses that he kind of understands. Hell, if he’d had awesome healing superpowers and then lost them, he’d be pissy too.

He’s too tired to argue anyway, so he checks the rear view mirror to be sure Yeager isn’t watching them, then lets his head fall onto Cas’s shoulder. Cas turns his head just an inch or two, lips almost brushing his forehead, but not quite.

The way Cas looks at him sometimes—in his most wasted moments and his most lucid ones—well. Dean wonders. Cas is pretty free and easy with the chicks these days, and occasionally Dean’s noticed a guy sneaking out of his cabin in the small hours. But he doesn’t look at any of them how he looks at Dean, and somehow, there’s a vicious little satisfaction in knowing it. Occasionally, when Dean’s tired enough he forgets to be careful even inside his own brain, he thinks maybe, if things were different…

Things aren’t different. Dean closes his eyes, and the truck bumps on down the track.

 

\----

 

The mom and the kid—Carla and little Matthew—settle into one of the empty cabins. Sure, that means more mouths to feed, but hey, gaining people instead of losing them for once has to count as a win. Life at the camp grinds on as usual, fall slides into winter, and somebody decides they need to have Christmas.

In practice, that means decorations that are mostly branches nailed up over doorways, a communal pool of whatever booze people have been hoarding away or snagging on the side on supply runs, and toys carved out of stray pieces of wood for the few kids in the camp. Christmases patched together out of rubbish aren’t exactly new to Dean, but that doesn’t mean he’s feeling it this year. Mostly he’s just grateful nobody wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving.

It’s that dead kind of midwinter cold where your breath mists white and every sound seems magnified, and Dean leans up against the back of his cabin, a tin mug holding a slug of Chuck’s freakily-strong moonshine clutched between his hands. He hears the soft crack of a twig, one careful footstep and then another, and he straightens up, hand halfway to his gun when Cas’s familiar silhouette rounds the corner.

Dean lets out a sigh, scowling as Cas settles beside him, tipping his head back against the cabin wall and exhaling a plume of breath.

“You know,” Dean says, “you used to be better at this stealth crap.”

Cas seems to have given up taking offense at this stuff, or at least he does a damn good impression of not caring, and tonight’s no different. He just rolls his shoulders and turns his mirthless stoner grin on Dean, and wordlessly offers the bottle dangling from his hand.

Scotch, not Bourbon. It burns the back of Dean’s throat, smoky on the way down, and when he hands back the bottle he finds Cas watching him intently. His eyes aren’t glassy the way they sometimes are; he’s still sober, at least for Cas. Dean feels the warmth of his breath in the cold night air. And maybe it’s the Scotch-and-homebrew cocktail, maybe it’s the way something in him will always ache at the memory of that last Christmas before he went to Hell and the world went to shit, maybe it’s just that he’s damn tired—but Dean can’t keep being careful. Something, some stupid need, has dug its way into him and before he can stop himself he says, “What is this, Cas?”

Cas shrugs again and takes a pull from the bottle. Then he leans in and presses his lips to Dean’s.

He feels so warm, and there’s whiskey and weed smoke on his breath, the fingers of his free hand catching at the front of Dean’s jacket. When he pulls away again, the smile on his face is one of resignation.

“Merry Christmas, Dean,” he says, not the solemn Cas of old, but not the painfully cheerful, barely-on-nodding-terms-with-reality one of now, either. He hands Dean the bottle and turns to leave.

Dean’s “Wait” comes out without his permission, breath catching in his chest.

But Cas comes back.

This time, they kiss one another breathless against the cabin wall, only parting when they hear the crunch of footsteps on the frozen ground. It’s nowhere near enough—but, like he’s read Dean’s mind, Cas disentangles himself and disappears into the shadows around the side of the cabin, way more silently than he arrived.

Keeping this quiet is the sensible thing to do. In the camp—well, you don’t get to pick and choose your neighbours in a place like this, and there are definitely people here who’d look at them differently. Who might be a little less eager to pay attention when Dean tells them what to do, and who might just get themselves killed or turned Croat as a result. Plus there’s the way the world always seems to know when you’ve got something good, or just when you’ve got something, and do its damnedest to tear it away.

Yeah. Sensible. 

Two figures round the corner of the cabin, hand in hand, laughing and obviously drunk enough not to feel the cold. The chick is Risa, Dean can tell by her hair, but in the dark he can’t see who the dude is.

Not like it matters. He raises the bottle of Scotch Cas left behind in salute, and heads for his cabin.

 

\----

 

That’s how things are, for a while. Snatched kisses, whispered snatches of conversation that never really go anywhere, hurried handjobs in bathrooms. One dumb, reckless, never-to-be-forgotten fuck in the woods far from the camp, the spring grass warm under Dean’s knees as Cas pushes into him slowly, lays soft kisses against the back of his neck and across his shoulders, and says nothing at all. 

They’re late back to camp, greeted with desperate relief, and Dean has to make up a story about thinking they saw a demon in the woods and order extra patrols for a week.

The rest of the time, Cas is the same as ever. He doesn’t quit with the booze or the drugs or the chicks, or with the eye-rolls and sarcastic comments when Dean’s giving out instructions. Hell, it’d look suspicious if he did.

It isn’t exactly ideal. But it’s about all they’re ever gonna get, and that’s gotta be good enough for Dean. 

And it is, until Dean’s clone from five years ago shows up snooping around in front of the camp.

The whole situation is a pain in the ass Dean doesn’t need, especially this close to finally tracking down Lucifer. 

He tries to tell himself that’s all it is. He tries not to notice the fond way Cas’s eyes follow his former self around whenever they’re in the same room, how his smile looks more genuine than it has in years—and sadder, at the same time. And he tries not to think about how it’s like looking in a funhouse mirror, seeing this younger, softer version of himself, with his fear and his hopefulness and his naïve horror at the idea that Sam could’ve decided to buddy up with Lucifer, or that Dean could’ve stayed away from his side when he did.

Instead, he thinks strategy. Assuming past-Dean ends up back in his own time eventually, this is the best chance any of them has. So he tells it like it is. Michael’s the only one who can stop this. Sure, he isn’t an ideal solution, but. Half the world still turning, half the human race still walking around alive and oblivious to the evil crap bubbling under the surface of its reality? Yeah, that’s better than what they’ve got now. That’s more than worth Dean’s one stupid little life. 

He’s said as much to Cas a dozen times over. Cas will brush him off, change the subject with a dumb joke, or—if there’s nobody else around and he’s in one of his occasional serious moods—say nothing and just stroke Dean’s cheek with his thumb. He won’t disagree.

Dean’s past self does, because of course he does.

“You need to see it,” Dean tells him. “The whole damn thing. How bad it gets. So you can do it different.”

He hesitates for a moment, wondering if he should tell. _You’re gonna lose your brother, and now you’re gonna lose the only other person who loves you, and you coulda loved him, too, if you’d only opened your damn eyes._

He doesn’t. “I’m begging you,” he says, instead. “Say yes.”

Dean’s past self looks back at him, and the _no_ is clear as day in his eyes.

 

\----

 

He goes to Cas’s cabin, before they head out.

He knows what’s coming; and sure, Cas doesn’t say it, but he knows, too. That’s why Dean doesn’t pull back when Cas takes his hand, though the camp is busy and one of Cas’s groupies could walk in anytime. 

Cas just runs the pad of his thumb across Dean’s knuckles, almost a caress, his eyes never leaving Dean’s face. For a moment the empty smile is gone from his face, and Dean can almost imagine this is the Cas of five years ago, with a stick the size of a telegraph pole up his ass and a gaze that feels like it sears right through to Dean’s tattered mess of a soul. Dean swallows, wets his lips.

“You wanna ride up front?” he says. “I could use you.”

For a moment Cas says nothing, the look in his eyes unreadable, and then he blinks and something softens in his face.

The cabin door opens.

On instinct, Dean drops Cas’s hand and steps back. Cas hovers there for a moment, his hand still in midair, and then he closes it into a fist and pulls it back in to his side.

One of Cas’s hippy followers, Marie or Mara or something, is standing in the doorway, blinking at them.

“Uh, sorry,” she says, backing out of the cabin. “I’ll—you know what, it isn’t important. I’ll go ask somebody else.” 

She closes the door behind her, but the moment is already broken, and when he looks back at Cas, Dean finds him grinning again.

“I think I’ll ride with past you,” Cas says, easily. “He’s nicer.”

“Hey, Cas, don’t sugarcoat it,” Dean grumbles, falling back into the established script with a mock-scowl and ignoring the twinge of loss. “Okay, we’re out in twenty.”

“Got it.” Cas salutes him, only it feels more like a dismissal, and Dean, being a dumbass, can’t let it stand.

He stops halfway to the door and turns back. Cas is still watching him.

“Uh,” he says, and then swallows hard. “I just—maybe—when we get back—” He trails off there, because what the hell is he gonna say? _We’ll hold hands and throw a coming-out party? We’ll have magically saved the world so I won’t have to worry about you dying on me anymore?_

Cas takes pity on him and doesn’t make him finish. _When we get back_ was already a lie, anyway. He steps forward into Dean’s space like he used to, and cups his face and presses a single warm, chaste kiss to his lips. 

“Maybe,” he says softly, unsmiling.

It sounds like goodbye.


End file.
